When you’re playing the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, always try to keep in mind The Spirit of the Game and stick to it. The Spirit of the Game can vary a lot depending on the people playing it, but in general, it is:

The characters are super heroes who are trying to save the people they care about by direct action.

You can interpret this in lots of ways, but it’s a good guideline to keep in mind during play. If your game strays too far from it, you might want to try to bring the story back around toward it.

Sticking to the Spirit

If you’re playing an established Marvel character, sticking to The Spirit of the Game is easy. When faced with a choice in the game, all you have to do is ask yourself, “What would this character do?”

When you’re playing an original character, you can ask a similar question. “What would a Marvel super hero do?”

There’s a lot of latitude for such decisions, and much of that can depend on the context of the situation. Would a hero use deadly force against a villain? If you’re playing Spider-Man, the answer would always be no. If you’re playing Wolverine, the answer could be yes, but even then that could threaten his status as a hero.

Straying from the Spirit

If you want to play a character differently from how they’re usually portrayed—or from how you think a Marvel super hero would act—well, it’s your corner of the Multiverse. You and your fellow players can do whatever you want in it.

There are all sorts of strange universes out there, and in some of them, Captain America (for example) is not the nation’s greatest hero but a flat-out villain. In others, the variants of those regular heroes are helpless or cowardly or otherwise troubled. You can do whatever you like in your home game. Just make sure that the other players in the game are okay with it first, or you may wind up causing all sorts of friction.

There are other ways that you can stray from The Spirit of the Game besides leaning into villainy, though. For instance, if your character prefers to call the police rather than step in and try to solve a problem directly, that doesn’t feel much like a Marvel story. The same thing goes if they would rather walk away than get involved.

It would also be jarring if the heroes decide to use their Powers for profit rather than for the common good. Marvel heroes don’t generally sell their own merchandise, for instance, or use the patents on their inventions to make themselves rich. They’re too busy trying to save the world directly to worry about such things. Sometimes that’s to their detriment, but that’s part of the drama that surrounds them.

In another vein, you could play a game that focuses on the office drama happening in the lives of the characters’ secret identities. While that might make for a fun break from high-stakes adventures, if the characters don’t ever get to use their Powers, it’s probably not going to feel much like a Marvel game.

As the saying goes, “With great power there must also come great responsibility.” While that comes from Spider-Man’s origin story, it applies to most Marvel super heroes too—including yours.